All these innovations were made possible by continuing advances in the power and compactness of computer components. One route that both Intel (Computing at the Speed of Light) and IBM (Electricity and Light in One Chip) explored was to try to overcome the limitations of electricity by developing computers that run on light instead. Another radical idea, realized by a startup, was to create chips that work with probabilities, not 1s and 0s, an approach that could speed cryptography and other statistical calculations (A New Kind of Microchip).

Meanwhile, Apple (What’s Inside the iPad’s Chip?) and the Chinese government (China: a New Processor for a New Market) each took chip design in a new direction. Apple is striving to make chips for the iPad that balance portability and power, and China to make computing power available inexpensively to parts of the huge country that are as yet unwired.